EWCS 2010 - Questionnaire translation

In order to develop a valid, reliable and internationally comparable questionnaire the translation from the English master file into the other languages required a series of steps and contributions from a team of experts.

For each version:

Two independent experts translated the questionnaire into their language

A third person combined these versions into one

This combined version was translated back into English, and

A final version was validated by our EWCO correspondents who are experts on working conditions research.

The European Working Conditions Survey has been carried out 5 times with some questions repeated in one or more waves. That makes it necessary to treat previously used questions (trend questions) differently from new questions to enable comparisons over time and to maintain the consistency of the data. The translations of trend questions - some of them dating back as far as 1991 - were changed only in case of serious discrepancies between the English master and the translation.

The 5th EWCS questionnaire was translated into 32 languages including the key minority languages of the surveyed countries. Nine of the languages were used in more than one country and adapted to the cultural context when necessary.

Below is the list of languages for each country (100-600KB pdf files, except for PL: 2MB, RO: 1.2MB, and SK 2.1MB):